Pages

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

A TDY to Remember - Michael

This present journey began on 12 June and here it 22 June and not quite complete, but I am getting ahead of myself. As I said, it began on 12 June with a flight out of Misawa on JAL. After the standard bus trip from Haneda to Narita, there was a 12 hour trip on a United Airline flight to Washington Dulles. The flight was not so bad, but being crammed in the middle of the plane (a 777) for such a long trip was a bit of a challenge. Arrived at Dulles just in time for a T-storm to blow in. This delayed the flight for well over 4 hours. Oh well. Such is travel this time of year.

The TDY (temporary duty) was to be able to teach a marriage retreat program called MarriageCare. I think it will be very good to put it into action.

Ran into some old friends there also. Ch T from my TDY to Mountain Home AFB nearly 20 years ago is doing great. He is getting very close to retiring, but he is full of life and fun as always. I met Ch S in Hungary 13 years ago when I relieved him as the installation chaplain. We met again when I replaced him as the Senior Protestant Chaplain at Goodfellow AFB. I met up with Ch H as well, but I do not have a photo of him. We met him at our first base, Malmstrom. It was a lot of fun to see them all and to reminisce.

I also had a little bit of free time that I invested into a stroll up the road to see the state capitol building. It was very ornate inside, and it had a bit of history on the outside. The interior had very high ceilings and a great deal of art work, statues and inscriptions. One of the statues was the late John C Calhoun. He served as the Vice President to two of our early presidents. I have a good friend who is a direct descendant of his. The separate house and senate chambers were also very ornate.

Out front there is a statue of George Washington. The Union soldiers coming through tried to damage it for some reason. This seems rather silly when you realize they were attacking the foremost founding father of the nation that they had pledged their lives to re-unite. Somewhere that detail was lost in their thinking. The other point of history is six stars marking the place where Union cannons hit the building during the closing months of the Civil war.

From here, I began the journey down to Tallahassee and Melobourne FL see more friends, but I will add this in my next post..